Checking out Info center is EOS, and I noticed I have a tainted kernal. What does that mean?
I found out it has something to do with nvidia card. Still not sure what it all means. Anyone have a clue?
@g-r11 ~]$ sudo dmesg | grep taint
[sudo] password for g:
[ 1.768462] nvidia: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 1.768467] nvidia: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[g@g-r11 ~]$
I think it means you have non-free modules loaded. Nvidia is non-free, so it taints your kernel. I could be wrong, but the output seems to explain that.
From the Fedora Discussion board:
In the context of the Linux kernel, tainted basically means it is not supported by the community/upstream. And as soon as you load some external, third-party, proprietary module, such as Nvidia official driver, Linux community can’t basically guarantee or support things as they are outside of their realm.
Any module which is not GPL compatible is tainting the kernel. Like ZFS for example. ZFS is using an open source license and it is maintained by the community but the module is tainting the kernel.
This whole concept of a tainted kernel is a GPL issue.
EDIT:
When you look at all the FOSS licenses (free and open licenses) you see that most of them are incompatible with the GPL2 (kernel license).